


nothing's impossible

by appleheart



Series: LoZ Music Shuffle Prompts [4]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: F/M, Light-Hearted, Love Letters, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-13 00:47:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4501350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appleheart/pseuds/appleheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"For the sake of her kingdom, she flees and hides from him. For her sake, he does not try as hard to catch her as he might." Zelda and Ganondorf leave each other messages that no one else needs to understand. (OoT-specific.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	nothing's impossible

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a music shuffle prompt. Anonymous requested "ZelGan" and the shuffle turned up Depeche Mode's "Nothing's Impossible."
> 
> I wrote this thinking of the seven year gap in OoT, but I guess you have to age Zelda up a bit.

For the sake of her kingdom, she flees and hides from him.

For her sake, he does not try as hard to catch her as he might.

Each leaves the other messages. They leave no permanent mark on the world, nothing which could be traced or held against them by indignant allies. Nothing that any other eye could interpret. But he knows whose fingers braid his black steed’s mane while his stablehand snores off an extra-potent jug of wine, just as she knows why her dead mother’s ring now adorns his pierced ear .

When he spears the severed head of a certain sly-fingered courtier to the gate of her conquered city, her people take it for a threat. She knows it to be a gift. On the morning his youngest daughter recovers from the fever that everyone thought would stop her breath, he finds a half-empty cup of an old, rare Sheikah remedy beside her cradle.

This time, she has written her love letter on the upturned face of a flattish stone, dipping her finger in water instead of ink. Already the hot sun has nearly erased it. In a few minutes more, it will have baked into invisibility.

She hopes it will last long enough.

She has tarried too long writing it, and nearly missed her chance to hide. As his approaching footsteps echo through the canyon, she throws herself deep into the shadow of a heap of fallen stones. She burrows into the gritty red earth like a tortoise. Her hooded cloak is stained and no particular color and hides her well. She keeps her hand over her face, peering through the narrowest crack between her fingers to keep the light from reflecting off her eyes and giving her away. She breathes shallowly. She cannot stop her heart from beating. It seems so very loud.

He almost overlooks her message, striding along the path, and her heart gives a painful skip as he sets his foot on the stone she chose.  _Look, look, look!_  she begs. (Such prayers are always so much more heartfelt than any she has offered to the goddesses.)

Perhaps he hears her prayer, or her thudding heart. He pauses midstride and steps backward, uncovering the stone. He crouches down to look closer.

She wrote no words. In an hour, only five parallel scratches will remain, such as might be made by a beast’s claw or a hob-nailed boot. Only he will know that she laid her wet fingerprint here and there, spotting the stone, turning it into notes on a musical staff. Only he will know the song she left for him. She has not forgotten the days when they played in harmony.

He hums it softly to himself. The faintest smile pulls the corner of his mouth back.

Watching him from her hiding place, she smiles back. They have not been so close since the day he killed her hated father, and saluted her with a blood-drenched sword before her soldiers came to her defense.

He glances up and around, as she knew he would, but never looks down. He offers a bow—in quite the wrong direction, if he only knew it—and sets off again, shouting a jibe over his shoulder for his warriors lagging behind him. The song on the stone dries up and disappears.


End file.
